“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

The term “resist” means to “stand against,” or “oppose,” and is used in reference to our warfare with Satan. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist steadfast in the faith” (I Peter 5:8,9). “Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand [resist] in the evil day, and having done all, to stand [upright and active]” (Ephesians 6:13).

Four times in this passage we are told to stand. Therefore, we can be sure that Satan’s goal is to make sure we do not. We are told to “put on the whole armor of God” (v.11) in order to “stand against the wiles of the devil” (“wiles” means to “travel over”). This traveling over is as devastating as the “devouring” of I Peter 5:8.

Ephesians 6:13 speaks of withstanding in the evil day. The evil day is this age when Satan’s influence is such that it must be reckoned with daily on every hand. For that reason, it is important that God’s armor for the Christian begins with the “loins girt about with truth” (v.14). Peter teaches us to “gird up the loins of (our) mind” (I Peter 1:13). The creative center of the mind needs to be “belted in,” or controlled and channeled by truth, for only by standing in truth does one stand against Satan. “There is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44). He opposes truth in his very essence, and because the spirit of truth dwells in us, he opposes us (John 16:13; I Corinthians 3:16). And it is this same Holy Spirit which testifies of Jesus Christ who has given us the victory whereby we stand “steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord” (I Corinthians 15:58). CJH